My Directv receiver shut down last night. I got a diagnostic code, and the screen said to reboot the device. I did. Then it told me to call technical support. I did. She couldn’t reboot it. She said I would have to pay $20 to ship a new receiver, and then pay $8.95 per month to hook it up. I told her I thought it was their device. No. She said. It’s yours. I asked why I was paying a monthly amount for the receiver. She said you’re not paying for the receiver, you’re paying for the signal to the receiver.

You may have misunderstood me. The truth of the matter is that I’m retiring from my job as Poet Laureate of Olathe, Kansas. I will still be making my living writing other forms of literature, like short stories, epic novels, and recipes for chocolate fudge.

The Road Less Traveled

I’ve decided that the rules and mandates of poetry are too many and too restrictive. Also, I am distracted by my fans at my readings. I’ve identified at least four ways people nod and hum in appreciation of what they think is a great line in my poem. But they all are performed with a glaze over their eyes. The last seven people I’ve met after a reading have all said, “love your poetry.” All of them. Those exact same words.

Also, Jenny Steitliner, you are the one who finds the deepest levels of my poetry. Jenny, there are no deep levels. I studied under the great Bob Dylan and Peter Paul and Mary.”Puff the Magic Dragon” is about a magic dragon.

There is no reason to buy my books, nor attend my readings. You are living a lie. Do you remember my last reading? Your eyes were locked on me, but your neighbors were discretely typing critical comments in text to their boyfriends who made it a point to be busy the day of my reading. No male loves, or even has sympathy for, my poetry.

I recently submitted the following poem to the International Poetry Awards committee in London:

Bill Puckett
A poem about a young man who could not easily
express his love for his family because his actions were most always unclear

There was a young man from Nantucket,
Whose toilet he could not flush it.
The content of the Kohler one-holer,
would always flow the bowl over.
So he gave it to his mother-in-law in Pawtucket.

Dr. Paul Pzbiackiy
President and Chairman of the Board
Hawthorne University (the name of the university has been changed to protect the perpetrators.)

Dear Dr. Pzbiackiy,
Greetings from academia here at Hawthorne University. I trust you’ll interpret this letter as a hope for better education at our esteemed University, and not a basis for my termination, as my wife has described it.

Perhaps you can sandwich in my little story in between your chats with donors and other important people. It starts with a test I was giving my students, room 121, O’Leary Hall last Friday. Five minutes into my 100 point exam, there was a noise in the hallway akin to a dismantling of a building. My students were distracted from their educated guessing, and I believed I should investigate. There was no one in the hallway, so I concluded that workmen were rigging the basement with dynamite, called for by some faulty work order.
Indeed, I found two workman, on step ladders, armed with pneumatic devices, creating dust and uproar in the room below my classroom. They stopped when I approached, and shut off their tools. I told them I was giving a test in the classroom above, and could they pause for about 45 minutes until we were finished.
My fellow adjuncts accuse me of obsessing with details in the large scope of higher education. Therefore, they didn’t express concern, as I did, with the three long seconds of silence delivered by the workmen in response to my request.

Perhaps, I could have waited longer before stating that I was judging the effectiveness of my teaching here at Hawthorne, and I said “it’s what we do here.” They responded that they fix the furnaces here and said “it’s what we do here.” I sensed conflict.

I went to an office on the second floor and confronted what appeared to be a secretary, doing what she did here. I asked who could stop the noise of destruction in the basement. Her belly laugh implied no one could. Then she said that no one could.

“You’re the fifth one to complain,” she said.

Dr. P…., I wouldn’t bring this little complaint to you, even with my obsession for details, but I ask you, can three seconds of silence in response to a request to act in favor of students over machines, indicate that these two maintenance men had missed the seminar on our university’s Mission and Purpose?

You might think your dog looks cute with a Donald Trump wig on at Halloween, but “cute” is not a dog concept. If King is wagging his tail and smiling when you photograph him in his Aardvark, or Mongoose, costume, do not misunderstand his behavior. He is planning to visit dog karma on you, not soon, but maybe closer to Easter.
One day, after having a few beers more than usual with your work buddies, you will come home to a redecorated house. This is certain. The couch pillow you got from your girlfriend will be in shreds. The reclining lever of the chair you got from your dad, will look like a bad totem pole carving. Your 150.00 pair of tennis shoes will need more than shoelaces to affix them to your feet. King will be standing next to the shoes, smiling and wagging his tail. If he could talk, he would ask, “do you think I’m cute now?” But he can’t. That’s why he chewed up the Donald Trump wig, too.

November is coming up. The month has been designated NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.

Be alert.

Words Typed So Far

It means what it says. You join the group, you commit to writing a50,000 word novel in thirty days. It is a project fraught with simple rules:

1. Any 50,000 words will do. (Now, they do require that they make sense, like, you’ve gotta have sentences and paragraphs.)

2. You may use something you’ve already started. (That is to say, any 39,000 words will do.)

3. You don’t have to write every day of the month. (You could write 50,000 words on the last day and qualify for successful completion. This has been done by many writers who have been slowed by other November happenings, like Thanksgiving or Veteran’s Day.)

4. You can chat with other NaNoWriMo writers. That way, you can get support for your writing a novel that has no need for plot, suspense, character or even accurate spelling. By the way…the words you write in the chat room do not count toward the 50,000.

I have started a counterpart writing organization called NaNoWhyMo. It provides a bemoaning chat room where people can refigure how many words that have to write per day to overcome their not having written anything in the first 13 days of November. NaNoWhyMo also provides basketball and football schedules to provide material for members lists of excuses why they have only written seven words a day.

NaNoWhyMo will provide a prize for the writer who writes the best self-berating, woe-is-me, I-call-myself-a-writer-,but… statement. The winner of the award will be announced on December 1st, if I get around to it. Otherwise, December 2nd. A simple email will suffice to enter. Writers who write more than 3,000 words in November will be disqualified.

One of our most silly human traits is our waiting on our duly elected representatives to decide on legislation that will harm his/her political future the least.

I suggest this simple solution: we ask our business owners to raise the pay of their workers. Seriously. Raise your wages. It will be cheaper for you. People will want to work for you, and they will want to stay with you.

The cost of labor is not only the hourly wage. It includes the cost of finding, training, firing, and finding and training again.

We don’t need to go to the ballot box every two, four, six years to make a change. Next week, we need only go down to Costcos or any other like-minded business, and buy what they have to sell.

At Costco, see that smiling face and hear that friendly attitude? He or she is making, on average, $16 per hour.

We don’t need no stinkin’ minimum wage laws. We just need good business practices.

It was a brilliant idea, this Tax Increment Financing. Find a blighted area that is not contributing to the property tax base, build a 73 million dollar multi-use complex of apartments and businesses. Exempt the builder from those nagging property taxes that are produced by new developments, thus, blight, crime, and stench are replaced by shiny buildings. We have such a development not far from our town. You may know where it is. It is located in the richest county in our state. It was built six blocks from the richest town in our state. Blight never was here in my town.

I suggest a different approach. 1. We choose a blighted area. You know it’s blighted because there would be no house you would live in, in that area. There would be a helicopter overhead. You would wonder why there were so many police cars. 2. Like Tax Increment Financing, we would eliminate property taxes. Period. Forever. That would encourage people to own something there. 3. We eliminate sales taxes on all purchases in the area. That would mean gas, food and clothing would be cheaper there. That would draw business to the area. 4. We eliminate all income taxes. That would make it a popular place to live.

Do you see the loopholes in this plan?

No problem.

There are rules: If you take advantage of any tax advantage, you must live there. And you must work there.